Seasonal streamflow forecasts for Europe – Part I: Hindcast verification with pseudo- and real observations

Greuell, Wouter; Franssen, Wietse H. P.; Biemans, Hester; Hutjes, Ronald W. A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-3453-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-3453-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Sub-seasonal to seasonal hydrological forecasting

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-3453-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 6

Research article

|

28 Jun 2018

Research article |

| 28 Jun 2018

Seasonal streamflow forecasts for Europe – Part I: Hindcast verification with pseudo- and real observations

Wouter Greuell, Wietse H. P. Franssen, Hester Biemans, and Ronald W. A. Hutjes

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Final revised paper (published on 28 Jun 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 30 Nov 2016)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of "Seasonal streamflow forecasts for Europe – I. Hindcast verification with pseudo- and real observations"', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 Dec 2016
- AC1: 'Author Reply to HESS-2016-603-RC1', Wouter Greuell, 09 Mar 2017
RC2: 'Review of ‘Seasonal streamflow forecasts for Europe – I. Hindcast verification with pseudo- and real observations’ by W. Greuell et al.', Christel Prudhomme, 09 Feb 2017
- AC2: 'Author Reply to HESS-2016-603-RC2', Wouter Greuell, 09 Mar 2017

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by Editor and Referees) (24 Mar 2017) by Ilias Pechlivanidis

AR by Wouter Greuell on behalf of the Authors (16 Oct 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (23 Oct 2017) by Ilias Pechlivanidis

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (20 Nov 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (25 Nov 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

First, I would like to thank the authors for this excellent contribution to seasonal forecasting at the European scale. Indeed, the submitted paper is very well-written, and dense not only with results but also with discussions. My few comments are listed below, separated between general questions or minor comments, and formatting remarks.

Comments and general questions

L38-39 and L622-623: Could you please clarify this sentence both in the Abstract and in Results? To me, “delay” alone cannot explain this gain in skill from runoff to discharge, and terms such as “inertia” would seem more appropriate. Maybe the second part of the sentence regarding lead times goes in that direction, but it was not clear to me.

Abstract: I would advise shortening it by only mentioning major results.

Section 2: For the sake of clarity, I believe that this section’s structure would benefit from following its title: system, models, data and methods of analysis. Section 2.3 follows this, Section 2.2 is clearly focusing on part of the data, but Section 2.1 takes the reader through systems (L230-256), data (L258-275), systems again (L277-285) and model (L287-315). I recommend reorganizing this section.

L577-579: I do not observe this in Figure 5b. Instead I read that the forecast initialized in February has an average skill of ~0.35 in June, and that the forecast initialized in July has an average skill of ~0.5 in August.

Figure 3: Are the months indicated in the figure initialization months or target months? Both are mentioned in the text preceding this figure (e.g. paragraph from L391 of the Methods of Analysis and L454). Could you mention it in the legend of Figure 3 or in the text?

Section 3.3: It may have appeared earlier in the text but, here, I was missing a short sentence or reminder of the criteria used to define small and large basins.

Minor comments and typos

L41: “ctual” should be “Actual”

L59: The order of the citations seems inversed here.

L73: Some characters are missing in this line.

L414: “rover” instead of “river”.

L457: The numbers for Figures 2 and 3 are swapped.

L807: I assumed that “the upper and the lower box” referred to Fig. 1. If so, please add a reference in the text.

L1044: There is probably a problem in the punctuation of this sentence.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (26 Nov 2017) by Ilias Pechlivanidis

AR by Wouter Greuell on behalf of the Authors (18 May 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (03 Jun 2018) by Ilias Pechlivanidis

AR by Wouter Greuell on behalf of the Authors (07 Jun 2018)

Short summary

This paper presents the development and skill analysis of WUSHP, a system that makes hydrological forecasts for time horizons up to 7 months. Hot spots of significant skill in river discharge were identified in Fennoscandia (from January to October), the southern part of the Mediterranean (from June to August), Poland, north Germany, Romania and Bulgaria (mainly from November to January), and west France (from December to May). Some skill is left at the end of the forecasts.